Leanne Betasamosake Simpson and Robyn Maynard envision a future shaped by freedom in Rehearsals for Living Leanne, you write to Robyn that it's never enough to just critique the system, a name or oppression. We have to create the alternative on the ground in real time. How important is this building of the alternative? Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson authors of Rehearsals for Living in conversation with Suzanne Morrissette and Alia Fortune Weston Leanne Betasamosake Simpson: For me, I think it's the most important part, because I think we can use that critique to inform what we do. Right now, I'm in the territory of Yellowknife and with a group of 16 Indigenous women living on the land. In a sense, it's a little microcosm and a way of coming together on the land to create a different world.

A revolutionary collaboration about the world we’re living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists.

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Maynard and Simpson would probably say this is the wrong question. Simpson writes, “Our movements and mobilizations do not have the privilege of resting upon a fleeting emotion. The absence of hope is a beautiful catalyst.” Elsewhere, Maynard notes, “Even though I will dip my toes into cynicism now and again, I won’t let myself reside there.” They keep writing to one another, but also working: protesting, advocating, teaching, gardening. Maynard and Simpson, both mothers, ground their efforts in the very urgent need to create a survivable future for their children and communities. As an invocation for collective resistance, the book succeeds, but it’s also powerful when the authors share the small details of their lives – Simpson’s meditative nighttime runs with her daughter, Maynard effortfully tolerating the spider on her stairs – that ground their ethics in the reality of daily living. At times, their dialogue wades so deeply into critical theory that the epistolary structure is obscured. But when Maynard writes, “I miss you, Leanne,” in the midst of one didactic letter, it is a heart-rending jolt of intimacy.

Rehearsals for Living is a finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction. The winner will be announced on Nov. 16, 2022. A revolutionary collaboration about the world we're living in now, between two of our most important contemporary thinkers, writers and activists. Ruth Wilson Gilmore is Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Director of the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at CUNY Graduate Center. A co-founder of California Prison Moratorium Project and Critical Resistance, she is author of the prize-winning book Golden Gulag: Prison, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Gilmore is the recipient of the Cultural Freedom Prize from the Lannan Foundation. I've read a lot of books about activist issues. I think they're important, and teach me to question myself and our collective culture, and fight for change. These books are not easy, fun, or enjoyable to read. They're hard. Really hard. They present uncomfortable truths, force you to challenge ingrained assumptions, and present you with startling stories and statistics. This book falls in that category.The beautifully named Rehearsals for Living is a gift conjured by a pair of brilliant scholars during the dark days and months of the pandemic, lit by a powerful resistance movement, fueled and rendered magical by a profound and challenging dialogue that offers ways to collectively think and be and act in a chaotic world.” The exchange grew into their new book Rehearsals for Living — an urgent demand for a different way forward that offers new insights into where we go from here.

Mariann earned a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts and a Teaching Certification in 1972 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She earned a Master’s Degree in Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from York University in Ontario, Canada in 1976. She taught Art and Humanities part-time at Whatcom Community College, 1982-1985. She practiced as a Certified Acupressure Practitioner, a form of mind body work incorporating Chinese Five Element Theory and emotional health from 1985-2000, during this time she held a Washington State Massage License. Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, activist, musician, artist, author and member of Alderville First Nation. Her books include Islands of Decolonial Love, This Accident of Being Lost, As We Have Always Done and Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies.

Although the book is a blueprint for change, it also questions the value of hope. Simpson forces us to re-imagine the idea, writing that her Nishnaabeg ancestors have never needed hope to survive. Instead, “the absence of hope can be a beautiful catalyst.” Tenacity, anger and despair, as well as love, respect and joy, can all be motivators. Colonialism is a world-ending event, destroying cultures, languages and ways of being, but her forebears struggled against it, continuing to “world-build anyway.” This is a useful prescription for all of us as we attempt to move toward a world that is freer, and safer, for everyone.